Comments for broken walls and narrativeshttps://brokenwallsandnarratives.wordpress.com
A not so revolutionary blog about feminism, socialism, activism, travel, nature, life, etc.Wed, 14 Mar 2018 09:36:47 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.com/Comment on Feminist Astronomy by comradehhttps://brokenwallsandnarratives.wordpress.com/2016/11/13/feminist-astronomy/comment-page-1/#comment-145
Wed, 14 Mar 2018 09:36:47 +0000http://brokenwallsandnarratives.wordpress.com/?p=2126#comment-145It was a while ago when I wrote this, so I really apologize that I am not sure where I found the image. I believe it may have been this website: http://sci-educator.blogspot.com/2012/01/constellation-myths-part-2-why-tell.html

]]>Comment on Feminist Astronomy by Leehttps://brokenwallsandnarratives.wordpress.com/2016/11/13/feminist-astronomy/comment-page-1/#comment-144
Mon, 12 Mar 2018 16:31:55 +0000http://brokenwallsandnarratives.wordpress.com/?p=2126#comment-144I enjoyed this post, and will include it in my references for an article I am writing on Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. Can you give me the citation for the Callisto Arcas image? I’d like to include it.

]]>Comment on Lessons and Myths About Domestic Violence From the Case of Graham Garfield by Rowan Leighhttps://brokenwallsandnarratives.wordpress.com/2017/05/07/lessons-and-myths-about-domestic-violence-from-the-case-of-graham-garfield/comment-page-1/#comment-139
Tue, 13 Feb 2018 06:31:08 +0000http://brokenwallsandnarratives.wordpress.com/?p=5222#comment-139In regards to the “myth of the single incident”:

You don’t have much in this section, so I would like to share my story here. It relates to Graham Garfield, and I haven’t talked about it publicly much, although I did open up to his ex-fiance, and I informed prosecutors in Garfield’s case about what happened to me.

In early 2013, I went to a United Council of UW Students convention at UW-Madison. We were doing lobbying training over the weekend before lobbying legislators on a Monday. I was assigned to a training group with Graham, who I had met before on several occasions. He seemed like a fairly decent guy.

Now, I made some questionable decisions that weekend and I’m not going to pretend I was behaving like a responsible adult. I was 20, I was drinking, and I got extremely drunk during the partying that went on at the hotel. I was hanging out with a new friend I had made, and Graham and a few of his friends offered to take a walk around the hotel with me to help me sober up a little. It’s important to note that all of them were also inebriated. This was something I definitely needed. Graham had mentioned his then-girlfriend several times throughout that day, and he had seemed like a solid, non-threatening guy. So, I agreed to walk with them.

I told my friend I was going to go for a walk with these guys and I did. The next bit is slightly a blur, because again, I was very drunk. I remember walking, and I remember ending up in their hotel room talking with all the guys. I remember them smoking a bowl of weed while I kinda sat there.

Next thing I noticed, the other guys had taken off for some reason and it was just me and Graham. I was sitting in a chair, and he was looming over me. He went in for a kiss and I pushed him away. I remember saying “I thought you had a girlfriend,” to which he replied, “it’s fine, she cheats on me all the time.” I then told him that even so, I didn’t want to kiss him. He took off my shirt somehow, despite my drunken flailings trying to push him off me.

He continued to try to jam his tongue in my mouth as he pinned me down and started taking off my bra while I shouted “no” at him. Midway through that, the door of the hotel slams open, and two of the biggest guys I’ve ever seen came in, along with the friend I had left earlier. They pulled Graham off of me and my friend took me out of there. I’m pretty sure if they hadn’t come in when they did, Graham would have tried to rape me.

The next day, his friends came up to me and apologized for leaving me alone with him. They told me that all day, Graham had told them that I was “super into” him, and they assumed that I wanted to be left alone with him. When they had run into my friend after leaving us alone in the hotel room, she asked where I was, and they told her, at which point she had cleared up that I had NEVER indicated any interest in Graham. My friend found the two biggest guys there, and brought them with, and Graham’s friends let them into the room.

I didn’t get raped that night, and I wasn’t left with any real physical evidence of the attempt. I was drinking underage, and I also had a bit of a reputation for drunken hookups. I’m not ashamed of my youthful promiscuity, but it definitely damaged my credibility as a sexual assault victim. In fact, even my friends questioned me about whether or not I might have “sent the wrong signal” to Graham. They believed me when I said I was positive that I hadn’t indicated interest, and I honestly don’t blame them for having asked me.

Bottom line though, I wasn’t a credible victim/witness, and I had been drinking (to excess) while underage. My friend had some similar credibility issues. I decided I wasn’t going to press the issue, and that I would just try to forget about it. I worked with Graham the rest of the weekend on the lobbying stuff, and tried to push down my emotions on it. I ended up sobbing in between lobbying sessions that Monday. Needless to say, I took no legal action.

Cut to a couple years later, when I see Graham is running for public office. I thought about contacting the local news, but ultimately was too afraid of the public humiliation if/when I wasn’t believed about this thing that had happened to me. I also thought(hoped?) that what had happened to me was an anomaly, and that Graham had changed as a person.

Next cut to me seeing on his fiance’s facebook that they were engaged. I wanted to contact her to tell her not to do it, but I had no reason to think she would believe me. It would have been the word of the man she wanted to marry versus a girl who had a history of drunken promiscuity. (This is not a criticism of her, by the way, just my own assessment of my credibility.) Again, I hoped, if they were engaged, he was probably a better person now.

I thought about what happened to me a number of times over the 4 years between Graham’s assault on me and his assault on his fiance, and what always stuck in my head that made me want to say something was how his attempted rape of me seemed so planned out. He had set things up with his friends so that they thought I wanted to hook up with him. He spent the whole day setting it up, from what I could tell. Moreover, his selection of me as a target seemed suspect. As I’ve mentioned, I had about as little credibility in that sort of situation as any girl could have.

These are things that habitual predators do. They know how to select victims, and they plan out how not to get caught. Graham didn’t impulsively try to push me in a corner, he arranged things so that we would be alone, and so that he would have cover if anyone asked why we were alone together. Further, Graham had cultivated an image of authority and respectability for himself, which would have made someone like me coming forward be even less credible.

So when I saw what Graham did to his fiance, I went into shock, but I wasn’t surprised. In some ways, I blamed myself. I had kept silent for 4 years, and his behavior had escalated to horrifying violence. I reached out to Graham’s ex-fiance, and she helped me come to terms with things a bit. She told me that no one was responsible for what happened except for Graham, and that she couldn’t say if she would have believed me or not had I told her sooner.

I’m still working to not blame myself for my silence. I know that I likely couldn’t have changed anything, but I wonder how many other women were hurt by Graham between my assault and the one that got him arrested. I feel fairly confident in my guess that I wasn’t his first victim. What he did to me seemed practiced, as if he knew what to do in order to get away with it. I also don’t have illusions that he only attacked two women ever. The level of escalation between my attack and that on his fiance, and the 4 year gap in between, are pretty good indicators that he is a serial offender.

I haven’t gone public with my story before, and posting this here might not be very public, but I hope others who were hurt by Graham might see this and know that someone understands their silence and that what happened to Graham’s fiance isn’t their fault for staying quiet. It’s no one’s fault but his.

]]>Comment on How to Be a Sneaky Secret Santa by Nhttps://brokenwallsandnarratives.wordpress.com/2017/12/31/how-to-be-a-sneaky-secret-santa/comment-page-1/#comment-137
Mon, 01 Jan 2018 15:36:37 +0000http://brokenwallsandnarratives.wordpress.com/?p=8557#comment-137You were the BEST secret Santa and Best Rogue Secret Santa!!! You definitely confused most (if not all) of us!!! Good work! Thanks for always making it fun and thanks for my amazing gifts! It was always exciting!!!
Love,
“N” 😉

]]>Comment on Frankly, It Isn’t My Feminism by Patrick Filioshttps://brokenwallsandnarratives.wordpress.com/2017/12/10/frankly-it-isnt-my-feminism/comment-page-1/#comment-136
Wed, 13 Dec 2017 23:54:48 +0000http://brokenwallsandnarratives.wordpress.com/?p=8532#comment-136“Capitalism discriminates against no color, no religion and no creed”-Ben Shapiro
“fuck our people are starving”-every communist leader ever. Can you give me one example of a communist government that has not collapsed on or oppressed its people. Also, the fact that minorities are imprisoned at higher rates is due to a culture that promotes criminal behavior and disrespect for authority. This culture is like a wind up toy, it was placed there by an oppressive government. Criminals go to prison, that’s how it works, it does not matter your color. And the reason the U.S. never supports communist rebel groups is because communist governments have a history of being oppressive, ineffective, or effective dictatorships (I.E. North Korea, Soviet union, Yugoslavia etc). And we need to take care of our people before others. America is not the worlds police, and does far more than what should be expected for developing nations.

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Wed, 13 Dec 2017 04:48:20 +0000http://brokenwallsandnarratives.wordpress.com/?p=8532#comment-135Nothing in the world is entirely bad or bad in all situations, at all times, and absolutely. For instance, the prison system is critiqued because it incarcerates minorities at higher percentages per their population than white people, do not follow the same labor laws as jobs in society, divide families, provide profits to corporations, etc. But, certainly there are people who would say that “prison saved them” as it changed their life course. The police can help women escape abusive partners or help locate missing youth, but also have shot innocent people. So, when the police, prisons, U.S. foreign policy, etc. are critiqued it is based upon their general function within capitalism. The function of US foreign policy has generally been to promote what is in the best interest of the US (as is the case with the foreign policy of any country- working in its own best interest) which in our case, also happens to be based upon the expansion and promotion of what benefits our economy. I don’t want any group to be oppressed. I just don’t think that the United States can or should play the role of liberator since we will always lend our support to those groups or factions that best serve US interests. For instance, it is semi-unusual for the U.S. to pump support to a Marxist guerrilla group, even if it is fighting for the interest of an oppressed nationality- because if this group were to gain power- it would likely be antagonistic to US business interests or business interests in general.) Self-determination means that- it means allowing countries to determine for themselves what is in their best interest. We may not agree with it, like it, or find that it is just- but just as we would not want to be “liberated” from Trump by the bombs of another country- other countries should also have the right to their own leaders and coming up with their own methods and struggles against these leaders should they prove corrupt or unjust. To me, this is the best way to ensure autonomy. While immigration policies were favorable to your grandfather’s arrival here, there are many others who because of our immigration policies could not come here- and our own Native American population had likely only been considered citizens for one or two decades at the time (assuming your grandfather arrived in the 1930s or 40s). As a whole, our immigration policies have served business interests (allowing for some immigrants in times of labor shortages or barring others to uphold the racial hierarchy that depresses wages). When looking at the big picture and the function that our foreign policy plays in promoting capitalism, I draw a negative balance sheet. This isn’t to say that we never did a kind thing in the world. But, my first and fundamental assumption is that capitalism is oppressive (to women, to workers, to minorities, etc.) Anything which actively promotes or sustains capitalism is by extension an instrument of oppression. Hence, this is the logic behind the generalizations.

]]>Comment on Frankly, It Isn’t My Feminism by Patrick Filioshttps://brokenwallsandnarratives.wordpress.com/2017/12/10/frankly-it-isnt-my-feminism/comment-page-1/#comment-134
Tue, 12 Dec 2017 22:30:43 +0000http://brokenwallsandnarratives.wordpress.com/?p=8532#comment-134You say that U.S. foreign policy has never benefited oppressed ethnic groups/nationalities, you must be dense. Are Israeli Jews, who constantly face invasions and terrorism because of their religion not an oppressed demographic? Are Shiite and Sunni Muslims who are persecuted because of their religion not an oppressed demographic? My great grandfather was a socialist and he fled to america to face the Italian governments prosecution, the immigration policy at the time allowed him to do so. Was he not an oppressed demographic? Yes, american foreign policy has stuck its dick in things unnecessarily before, but that is not grounds to say that U.S. foreign policy does not and has not helped women. U.S. foreign policy got the U.S. into world war two, which caused the first boom of women in manufacturing jobs. U.S. foreign policy put sanctions and pressure on Saudi Arabia to let women drive. There are many more examples.

]]>Comment on Beating the Winter Blues by Momhttps://brokenwallsandnarratives.wordpress.com/2017/11/30/beating-the-winter-blues/comment-page-1/#comment-131
Fri, 08 Dec 2017 00:48:32 +0000http://brokenwallsandnarratives.wordpress.com/?p=8529#comment-131]]>I had to laugh about the whimsical snowman sipping hot chocolate and the seasonal sweater comment you made in your writing as I have one with snowman on it in my wardrobe and I do not associate myself as being “elderly.”😉